


Limbo

by threewalls



Series: Schirra [35]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: 707 OV, Dreams, Estrangement, F/M, Golmore Jungle, Interspecies, Mid-Game, Siblings, Side Quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-17
Updated: 2008-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>"Mjrn. You should not be here."</cite></p><p>They don't know where they're going any more. Post-Giruvegan, Pre-Pharos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo

Balthier is resting somewhere neither cold nor warm, but hard, perhaps the hold of the Strahl, with only a thin blanket over his clothes. Someone lifts the side of the blanket, a long-fingered hand spread wide over his chest. Balthier turns towards her, opening his arms so that she can slide into them.

Though her body moulds pliant against him-- Fran's body smaller than his, in the way of dreams-- her touch is hesitant. Her fingers drift, his chest, his hair, his ears. Balthier's hands slide up her back, cupping the back of her head to lean forward to kiss her, his fingers carding through short hair.

"Your face no longer smells like my sister."

Balthier jerks away, suddenly awake, and pushes Mjrn out of his lap. Golmore is perpetually dim, but her yellow dress is bright enough, the short white bob of her hair.

"Mjrn. You should not be here." Fran appears in an instant, as though stepping from a cloak rather than the treeline, to take hold of her sister's shoulder to pull her upright and march her to the far end of the jungle platform.

Ashe has elected to return to Balfonheim via Bur-Omisace, on the advice of Vaan, of all people, and so their party has found themselves once more within the vieran wood. They provisioned with the moogles, Tetran and Lulucce, at the edge of Eruyt, who told their oh-so-socially-responsible princess about the ravages of the wild Malboro in the Feywood. Fran had elected to remain behind, her acute viera senses more liability than asset when the finest of the wood warders had already fallen. Penelo had suggested that Balthier might also want to stay behind, so here he is.

Balthier sits exactly where he was. He can't hear Fran's conversation with her sister and he doesn't wish to. Of course it was not Fran creeping under his blankets, seeking his touch for the first time in months, for all the good it would be to her.

"But Sister-- Fran, why can I not--!"

Balthier pulls the blanket over his shoulders, watching Fran's silhouette watch her sister eventually leave. A chill has taken over the night, if it even is night. The jungle stinks of vegetative rot. Balthier will be happy to see the back of this place, even if they are only bound for Reddas' Balfonheim.

Fran's steps towards him are halting. She comes only so close as hearing distance, and stops.

Balthier waits, and considers pretending to sleep, except that's never fooled Fran. He levers himself standing.

"I am sorry. Your sister is a lovely girl, but I'd never-- if I'd realised..." He steps forward, but feel foolish when Fran remains where she is.

"Mjrn does not yet know her own path. In her haste to find it, she seeks to tread the paths of others. Hala would have been less kind than you."

Balthier cannot tell if Fran is accepting his apology, offering one of her own or whether she is indifferent. Once, he fancied he could read Fran's expression and her body, the timbre and shape of her words, but not now. Not who she is inside the Wood.

Perhaps he's simply not as perceptive as he had thought. He led Ashe right where his father wanted her, in conference with things that have half-convinced her to destroy the world. Soon, they'd have bigger problems than mutant vegetables and lost kingdoms, hume and viera alike.

Balthier and Fran stand on the platform, two paces apart, perhaps three. She doesn't move, and so neither does he.

"I miss the ship, Fran."

He thinks she nods, a flicker of the whites of her ears, but in the gloom, it is hard to be sure.


End file.
